They were walking, though they couldn't remember when they started.
The world had changed around them like a story being rewritten mid-sentence. The ground had lost its grain and turned to root-bone, pale and veined like the limbs of something long-buried. Trees curved backward into themselves, gnarled into question marks. The sky overhead bled sideways in gradients of dusk and storm, as if time couldn't decide which direction to fall.
Every so often, a star reversed itself—sliding across the heavens like spilled ink retreating to its bottle.
Ahead lay the Grinning Hollow, a jagged canyon carved by something ancient. Something cruel. Its mouth, forever twisted in a crescent smirk, waited with the patience of a predator that knew its prey would come willingly.
Vampher hummed a tune no one had taught him, one he couldn't name. The notes were too perfect, too circular. Like they had always existed.
Hiro was silent, his eyes far away—haunted by memories that didn't feel like his. His lips moved now and then, mouthing fragments of prophecy or prayer. Or both.
And Dee Megus, former God-denier, thread-weaver, and truth-breaker, walked slower with every step. His boots left no prints. His eyes flicked to shadows that shouldn't have existed.
They should have noticed.
The stillness. The perfection. The dreamlike ease with which they approached their destination. As if some part of them had been numbed, drugged, or quietly rewritten.
It wasn't until Hiro broke the silence that the world cracked.
"She's waiting," Hiro whispered. "She told us to come. Said we're close. Just a little further."
Dee stopped.
It was not the suddenness of Hiro's voice that struck him—but the certainty in it. The script-like precision of his tone. As if he wasn't speaking but repeating something someone had programmed into him.
"No," Dee murmured, barely audible.
Vampher blinked. "What?"
Dee turned, his cloak trailing like smoke behind him. "No," he said again—louder this time. Sharper. It cut through the warm dreamlike fog that had cloaked them like velvet.
"She gave us the fifth seal already," Dee said. "We met her. She remembered me. That moment… that was the fifth seal."
Hiro frowned. "We haven't—no, that can't be right. We're not there yet."
"Yes, we are," Dee snapped, whirling on him. "Think! Myla—her echo—remembered me. She saw me. That wasn't just a coincidence. That was the act of unlocking. The transference."
Vampher looked between them, doubt blooming in his eyes. "Then what is this? Why do I feel like we're supposed to be here?"
Dee closed his eyes.
A thin thread shimmered to life between his fingers. It wavered—twisting like something wounded. A memory thread.
But it buzzed wrong. Like a key cut backward. Like a scream muffled mid-birth.
"This memory…" Dee whispered, "…was implanted. False. Bent over our real past like a curtain."
He touched the thread to his forehead.
The world shivered.
The roots cracked like porcelain. The sky groaned.
And the Grinning Hollow's smirk turned toothless. Wrong. Breathing.
They were not at its edge. Not even close. They stood on a hill of basalt, half a league away, with ash on their boots and cold in their lungs. The path behind them was not the one they had walked—but one they had believed they had walked.
Illusion. Guidance. Redirection.
"Then we're being pulled here," Hiro whispered. "Step by step. Thought by thought."
"Yes," Dee said, voice quiet but firm. "Something that cannot lie is still guiding us through a story it controls."
Vampher clutched at his cloak. "What does it want?"
"To make us choose this path," Dee said. "To want the Hollow. To embrace it. It doesn't force. It… invites."
A silence fell.
Then Hiro's voice, brittle: "Then… do we turn back?"
Dee looked toward the Hollow. Its grin was gone now. Replaced by a slow, sucking breath. Inhale. Exhale. The scent of iron and time filled the air.
"No," Dee said finally. "We keep going."
"What?" Vampher's voice cracked. "You just said—!"
"If we walk away," Dee interrupted, "it will choose someone else. Another set of heroes. Another prophecy. The seals will break regardless."
"But we're not breaking them," Hiro insisted. "We're sealing them again. That's the task."
Dee said nothing.
The silence stretched long.
Vampher narrowed his eyes. "You don't believe that anymore."
Dee looked at the thread in his hand. It flickered. Struggled. Then vanished.
"I believe we're meant to believe that," Dee said softly. "That's the power of prophecy. Not just to foretell—but to shape what we are willing to see."
He clenched his fist. "And I'm starting to question the one who wrote it."
A breeze stirred.
Then a sound—like laughter caught in a throat full of static.
The wind whispered in Myla's voice.
A sentence formed.
"The fiend threa—"
Then it glitched. Stopped. Reversed. Tried again.
"The… fie—"
Glitch. Static. A mechanical screech of unraveling.
Then nothing.
Hiro flinched. "She's trying to tell us."
"She's not allowed to tell us," Dee said, eyes wide. "She is bound to the prophecy's shape. An echo of a soul that was fragmented because she tried to act outside the script."
Vampher turned slowly toward the Hollow. "So if she can't speak the truth, and we don't know what the seals are really doing…"
"…Then every step we take might be a step deeper into its plan," Hiro finished.
Dee nodded once. "Yes. But we go anyway. Because someone has to understand the truth before it's too late."
His voice dropped lower.
"And I think we're the only ones who might."
They turned.
The Grinning Hollow waited. No longer grinning. No longer false.
But real.
And watching.
Still miles off. But closer than it had any right to be.
They resumed walking. Not because they were sure.
But because doubt, too, was part of the path.
Because belief—misguided or not—was a blade that cut both ways.
And because somewhere beneath the lies and threads and half-glitched truths…
They still hoped they could save something.
Even if they didn't know what.
Elsewhere, in the Threads Between Worlds…
In a place where time forgot its name, a cloaked figure stood before a loom woven from every choice ever made.
It was made of paradox and prophecy, and the threads sang when touched.
The First Seal glowed faintly.
The Second, brighter.
The Third—cracked like ice.
The Fifth now pulsed in earnest.
"Five keys turned," murmured the figure. Its voice was made of old poems and unburied gods. "And they still believe they are binding. How elegant. How inevitable."
Its fingers brushed a crimson thread.
It twitched.
Then screamed—silent and long—as it belonged to Myla.
The figure smiled, stitched from broken endings.
"Let the last two seals sing."
It stepped back.
And waited.
Because the last story never ends.
It only changes the reader.